The Brooklyn Museum in particular embraces these platforms and integrates them into their website. These interactive features compliment their rather ‘typical’ website, which is used to provide basic information on exhibitions, operating hours, etc. for a cost effective interactive experience.

A prime example of their willingness to interact with a younger, social media savvy audience is none more evident
than on Twitter. With over 320,000 followers, the Brooklyn Museum updates their account on an almost daily basis, using it to interact with potential visitors, as well as promote their new exhibitions. Unlike some companies, interaction is not only based on their ability of the business to directly relate to the tweet by nature of organization, but on a personal level. The Brooklyn Museum takes on the role of a friend as much as it takes on the job of promoting their institution.

The Museum’s Facebook Page takes a similar approach, and effort that has gained them over 45,800 ‘Likes’. The account is primarily used to inform the public of their featured events and to answer questions. There is less direct interaction than on Twitter, but they manage to still interact with their base. The comments and answers received on both ends create a nurtured community of museum fans.

The Brooklyn Museum treats their YouTube account like educational television. It provides a look behind the scenes for those that want more information on the features they’ve seen or were thinking of seeing.

This behind the scenes access is reinforced in the Brooklyn Museum blog updated once to twice per week. With several contributing authors, the museum’s employees share their intimate relationship with their work with the public.

The blog allows readers to access animated podcasts, stories, and pictures of how employees set up their public art experiences. It also shows their dedication to the museum and their efforts to constantly improve and bring life-long memories to its visitors; inspiring readers to visit.

The museum has used social media to reach out to potential and repeat visitors by making it an operational tool in its business. By more than just having a presence, they have been able to attract thousands of new visitors. Art will always be art, but the museum as a corporation with employees, expenses, assets, and liabilities have used social media to sustain and improve its business model. They are a prime example of a business that has been willing to change as people and the way they interact with brands/activities has changed.

New Facebook Friends List

The Custom Friends List Feature was already available. I am sure that many of you have custom listed many friends in categories like: Schoolmates/Classmates, Colleagues, Best Friends, Just Friends, Extended Friends, Family/Parents, Relatives/Extended Relatives, “Not so Close Friends”, “Have to Keep them as Friends”, etc. Facebook rolled out a new set of friends list standardizing and defining them into specific categories:

• Close Friends
• Acquaintances
• Smart Lists (Work, School, Family, City)
• Subscription (Following/People You Follow) and  Subscribers (Followers or Fans)
• Restricted Friends

Close Friends or Featured Friends

Close Friends are those, whose updates come to you as notification when you add them. However, you can turn off the notification from the Close Friends List Page. The updates from the people tagged as Close Friends, will also have higher priority in your homepage news feed, than others.

Who are the best candidates for Close Friends?

• Buddies that you want more updates from
• Updates from family members you don’t want to miss
• Someone you have crush on
• Who’s updates are more important than normal friends
• Friends you share common interests with, etc.

Acquaintances

Updates from your Acquaintances will be rarely shown in Facebook homepage news feed. But, you will not miss their most important updates, like: Relationship status changes or migration to a new city. Rather than un-friending, this list can be a good choice to keep your friends with the mute button pressed.

People with probable candidacy for Acquaintances:

• Your close friend who updates noting but Gaming Resource sharing (assuming, you don’t like them)
• Link spammers or self promoting friends that you have to keep
• Your high school bullies,
• Annoying family members or relatives,
• Someone you don’t want to interact with much, but want them to get your updates to them, etc.

Smart Lists

Facebook introduced many smart lists (friend lists with a lightning icon) in the friend list feature. e.g. colleagues, family members, classmates, and local friends within same city. When you mention your work place (company), education institution, and cities; you will find them as separate friend list in smart lists, like:

• Family members and relatives
• Colleagues, boss, and friends within same company you mention on your profile
• Classmates from school, college, university or other institutions
• Friends and buddies in the same locality/city that you currently live in.

When you mention multiple companies and education institution, you also get smart lists for each company and institution. Family members are filled by the various relationships defined on your profile. But, you also have the freedom to go to the Family Smart List Page and add new family members without defining any relationship. In Facebook, you can not mention more than one city. So, the list for local friends can have just one listing.

Optimizing Custom Friend List

Custom Friend Lists is an old feature. But, since you now have smart lists, it is better to merge some lists and remove the unnecessary custom friend list from Facebook. However, for getting better updates, you can still have some custom friend list to serve your purposes. With the new changes, you can optimize them to serve your needs. Some Custom Friend List optimization techniques are:

Merge Friend List

If you have already defined a list before, you can go to the close friend, acquaintances, smart list pages and merge the existing list to make a separate channel for various types of Facebook friends you have.  This will help you to utilize the predefined friend list by Facebook better.

Delete Some Custom Friend List

Since you already have some predefined friend list, it is wise to delete some of the custom friend list. This will help you to avoid duplication. But, make sure you merge the lists before you delete them.

Create Some New Custom List

For various purposes, you have the freedom to create more custom friend lists. One of the problems with the new friend list feature is that, you cannot see all colleagues and classmates together. But, you always have the freedom to create new custom friend list for them and merge them together from the previous lists.

Restricted Friends

The friends that you keep in Restricted Friend list will not see all your updates on their homepage, but they will get to see all your public contents that you tag them in. Otherwise, you are mostly mute to them. Unless, they define you as restricted friends, they are not mute to you. Facebook friends that you can put in this list are:

• Your boss
• Your competitors
• Friends from other companies, always trying to spy on you
• Your opponent or political contender
• Someone you don’t want to get any idea about what you are doing, etc.

Subscribers and Subscriptions

Facebook also rolled out the Subscribers and Subscription feature in the new update. This makes Facebook more like Twitter and Google Plus, where you can have followers and follow people without adding them as friends. Subscribers and Subscriptions are not actually friend lists as they are not ‘friends’.  In another word, you can define them as your personal celebrity and followers.

Subscribers: When someone subscribes on your profile, s/he becomes your fans and follower of you public posts only. In analogy with Twitter, this is the list of “Followers” you have.

Subscription: When you subscribe someone on their profile, the Subscription tab in your Timeline shows the people you are subscribed to. In analogy with Twitter, this is the list of “Following”. You will get updates on only their public feeds on your homepage.

You can activate subscription from the Subscribe Button Page. Celebrities who have large fan-base, they can use this feature to make their Facebook profile as the major media of communication or public updates. The public updates, however remains within the walled garden of Facebook. And to see them, you need to be logged into your Facebook Account. So, this is a bit different than Facebook Fan Pages for celebrities.

There can be 4 types of Subscribers:

Regular Subscribers

These are the people that hit only the “Subscribe” button on your profile. They are your followers that have interest in your public feeds. I am quite optimistic that, many marketers will come up with tips and tricks to increase your subscribers in near future.

Friend Subscribers

When you add a friend now, through friend request, you automatically subscribe to his/her public updates. But, when they add you as friend, they also subscribes to your feeds. This type of mutual subscription is called Friend Subscribers.

Unfriended Subscribers

Your friend is also subscribing to your updates. When you remove or unfriend a friend, you automatically unsubscribe from his/her updates. But, the subscription to your public feed is not changed at your unfriended friend’s end. So, s/he still remains subscribed to your feeds. So, these types of subscribers are called Unfriended Subscribers. When you plan to remove unwanted friends, you will eventually increase the number of Subscribers.

Pending Friend Subscribers

When you hit the “Add as friend” button on your new friend’s profile or somewhere else, you automatically get subscribed to his/her public updates, even if s/he  does not add you back as friend. However, you will not see his/her updates, unless you add him/her or subscribe to his/her feeds. And once s/he adds you, you don’t remain a “Pending Friend Subscriber”, you become a “Friend Subscriber” or just friends.

Other Types of Friends You Can Have on Facebook

Mute Friends

What happens when you hit the unsubscribe button on a friend’s profile? The result is a mute friend. This is will turn off all the updates from a friend. This is why it is a bit different than Acquaintances. Acquaintances are semi-mute friends whose important updates are shown to you. But, without un-friending a friend, you have the freedom to mute a friend by unsubscribing from their friend as well as public updates. However, as a friend you will have the freedom to visit their profile or timeline to see their updates.

Deaf Friends

This is the just the opposite affected party who mutes friends. These types of friends totally unsubscribe from your updates and do not respond to any. But, just like mute friends, your updates can be seen by your unsubscribed friend on your profile.

Subscription in Friend List

In case of pending friend subscribers, you have public updates of a person that is not yet your friend in Facebook. But, Can you add a subscription in Friend List so that the updates come to a specific friend list? The answer is no. I guess Facebook needs to open up this feature.

You will be able to find the “Subscribe” button right on user’s profiles, on the right side next to the profile name.

When you press the button Subscribe, you can choose which updates you want to receive, and Facebook gives you 1) All Updates, 2) Most Updates, 3) Only Important as main options, with filters available per update category (life events, status updates, photos, videos, games…).

And of course the subscription option doesn’t work for every status update you publish, but only for the updates that you make public.

To active this new feature, head out here.

Ivanka Trump

Ivanka Marie Trump is a successful American businesswoman, fashion model, and designer of her own lines of jewelry, handbags and shoes. The daughter of Ivana and Donald Trump, Ivanka is Executive Vice President of Development & Acquisitions at The Trump Organization. She is also one of the boardroom judges on her father’s reality show The Apprentice.

Like the majority of young people, she uses social media; but not to post random events throughout her day. She efficiently promotes not only her own jewelry, shoes and handbags, but the entire Trump Empire. Several posting patterns that lend insight into her strategy are apparent.

Her first method I call a “MUST”. She easily combines two of the Empire’s assets – Trump hotels and her jewelry line, by creating a  need-based relationship between them. Her jewelery line ran a promotion in which those that checked in to a Trump hotel were eligible for discounts on her products. This in turn makes it profitable for her to market Trump Hotels which will deliver an ROI to her jewelry line. For example, on Thursday, 3/31, she posted:

“Last chance! My exclusive MUST GO offer on FB ends today! Visit @TrumpLasVegas and enjoy a FREE suite upgrade! http://ow.ly/41h1x”.

In order to get a free suite upgrade, you have have to had liked a portion of her Facebook page. This posts that information on your Facebook user profile and puts the information in your News Stream from all of your “friends” to see. The trade off becomes a free suite upgrade in return for creating Trump Las Vegas brand awareness.

The second strategy is the “TOP”. Voting is necessary because Trump Hotel is vying to receive top honors at the Travel and Leisure’s Best Awards. It was her goal to communicate that The Trump Organization had been nominated for these Awards.  Involving Facebook friends in this process does two things. It promotes Trump Real Estate world wide and creates brand awareness in the event that the hotels win the awards they seek. Secondly, she promotes Trump Hotels to her Facebook friends by optimizing their landing page. Rather than sending them to the awards homepage, or to the form page to submit their entries, Ivanka sends her “friends” to a display page. This page not only leads you to the voting process, but allows you to browse several high quality hotel images and read descriptions of the amenities and services. So by encouraging friends to vote for her hotel, she also gives them an opportunity to look at the hotels and creates interest in staying at those locations themselves, at a future date.

In addition, whenever Ivanka goes on a business trip, she posts pictures of her stay at Trump properties. This both enforces the idea that the image of the Trumps, of a wealthy family that enjoy luxury is congruent with their actual lifestyle (which is a significant part of their overall market appeal) and aids in promoting the family hotel and real estate business. For example, on 2/24 she posted:

“Here are a few photos of Trump Ocean Club from my trip to Panama!” In which she posted several personal photos of the property.

She utilizes the power of voting again to promote her jewelry line.

As many do, she markets her jewelry by relating it to famous people that wear it. As many celebrities are idolized, consumers are aware what their brand choices are, and are inclined to make the same decisions when purchasing for themselves. This is a very old technique and the very idea behind endorsements. Ivanka posts that (actress) Emmy Rossum looked gorgeous when wearing items from her jewelry collection. She encourages her Facebook friends to vote again, this time to promote the style of an actress that wore her jewelery. This message, like the last has its own return on investment. Ivanka is well aware that if the actress happens to “win” popular opinion and get placed on a best-dressed list, her jewelry would be mentioned as inclusive of the pieces that “made” the outfit deserving of the win. In return, Trump’s jewelery line will see an abundance of press coverage, not limited to magazines and television talk shows.

Vote on Emmy Rossum’s glam gown. She has a great sense of style & looked absolutely stunning wearing my rose gold jewelry collection!

More familiar patterns of promotion are also evident. For instance, on 3/21 she posted:

“Love seeing the Pearl Tassel Earrings from my jewelry collection in this months Marie Claire! Be sure to check it out.” 170 people “Liked” her post.

Intertwining promotion with a personal aspect tends to resonate better with consumers. It’s part of the reason Social Media is effective. For instance, to promote a full-page ad for her shoe collection by Macy’s she posted on 3/13:

“I was reading my paper’s in bed on a lazy sunday morning and came across this full page Macy’s ad   for my shoe collection on page 5 of the NYTimes. Very cool!”.

This type of post resonates with an audience that “follows” her both for the purposes of gaining insight into her personal affairs and because they are fans of her work. To further insinuate the personal touch and to promote the product, she includes a pictures of herself holding the ad. As expected, this post was better received and generated 600 “Likes”.

This strategy does more than it seems. On top of promoting her shoe collection, it validates her product line by emphasizing that notable publications and associations also advertise her products as a selling point to their own direct business. This puts Ivanka as close as possible to her target. If someone missed the launch of the collection or the newspaper advertisement, he/she is now given a second chance. The followup and follow-through to any marketing campaign is arguably just as important as the initial implementation.

“Enjoyed a night at home with my husband. We hung out in the kitchen while I cooked us dinner (tomato soup and beef & broccoli satay w/ brown rice) and then watched a movie. Basically, it was the perfect Monday night.”, posted on 3/7.

Intertwining purely personal posts of no business relation helps to keep those following her interested in her page. If the social media strategy was based solely on product advertisement, she would see no responsiveness, much like many un-strategized social media attempts. The balance of personal and business makes her followers feel included in her life and give them the opportunity to at least feel that they know her better. This sentiment has been tested to generate brand loyalty for years to come, making it a great strategy for her.

She travels a lot, has successful jewelry, shoe, and handbag lines. She is married and pregnant. All of these aspects could not have been emphasized without Facebook. Even her ski holidays go now public. Through social media, she has given friends, fans, and more importantly the consumer public a highly desired look behind the scenes, while using the opportunity to further her own business ambitions.

The new branded pages will probably look a lot like the Facebook fan pages and will offer some extra services like analytics (currently available only  for few selected profiles) and improved privacy rules. At this moment, companies are usually using #hashtags, promoted accounts and tweets to connect to their audiences but this hasn’t worked very well in practice.

There aren’t a lot of details about how these brand pages will function and look like, but it is confirmed from Twitter that the brands want, and need, this kind of tools from the social network so that they can better manage their online presence and campaigns.

I have always wondered why Facebook, and soon Twitter, both looking for fresh revenue streams, are not considering adding few extra options to the branded profiles that will be available to companies as paid features. Using this kind of a freemium model strategy, they might even make some good $$…. Wouldn’t you be willing to pay few bucks if you could add some cool feature to your Twitter company page that gives you better interaction with your followers or have a built-in scheduled status updates in Facebook?

Btw, on a related topic: in an effort to attract more users to join the global 140 character conversation, Twitter will be changing the look of their homepage. They actually “copy-pasted” the Facebook homepage, probably thinking that new visitors would be more willing to sign up if the page reminds them of the platform on which they spend most of their online time.

Here is a list of social games on Facebook that I picked up based on reviews and voting from friends and others.

o    Farmville
A virtual world game developed by Zynga is the top social media game available on the Internet right now. With a small piece of land and money, users can start playing this game. 11 million active daily users reported.

o    Mafia wars
Be your own Mafia boss, do jobs, earn money and buy weapons. This is idea behind this game. Developed by Zynga and with about 4 million active users daily, this is the second on list of popular games on Facebook.

o    Zynga Poker
This is another social game from Zynga, where you can play poker with your friends and win daily bonus. This game has attracted players from more countries with about 30 million active monthly users.

o    Yoville
Just like the ones above, Yoville from Zynga is another virtual world game that allows users to create personal avatars, Yovillians who can play games, chat, attend events and interact with friends.

o    Pet Society
This free game from Playfish allows the users to create their own pets, involving in activities and earning coins to buy cool stuff. Pet society has about 13 million active monthly users.

o    Word Challenge
Another social game from Playfish is Word Challenge, where you are asked to create 3-6 letter words from the given 6 letters. Players are awarded a ranking based on the results for a comparison with their friends.

o    KickMania
The animated Kick Ass game on Facebook where every kick is unique and fun filled. A lot of people are playing this game developed by The Broth.

o    Happy Aquarium
This is a cool social game on Facebook with 12 million active users who can adopt a cute baby fish, watch them grow and build a happy aquarium.

The above list is a small one and soon this may increase in numbers. Now, go ahead and add the one you are really addicted to play and do it again.

What are the subjects that are being discussed on social networks? They are various, ranging from information on products or services, customer queries, product improvement ideas, customer assistance requests, and helping each other with their own views on product related issues and market conditions. This kind of interaction helps business owners respond quickly to customer queries and solve any open issues with ease. At this stage, companies will have to analyze what their customers are talking about, what they expect and their social behavior. This helps the business owners to make useful decision during their future sales campaigns.

I think both Twitter and Facebook have a unique opportunity to tap into the beneficial CRM market. With people sharing more about their personal likes and dislikes, professional information, location, and others, social media helps marketers to define highly targeted and personalized marketing campaigns based on the user data. Marketers can use social CRM as an application to study the social profile of their customers to know more about their connections and to build better relationships.

The future of customer relationship management is in social networks, as there is a huge increase in the level of interaction with the customers by way of online communities and social networks. Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are the best in class platforms for word of mouth marketing. About two thirds of companies gained increased customer satisfaction utilizing social media as a tool. Business people have to realize that it is not possible to market without social networks in the next few years.

Mr. Baskin argues that advertising and marketing executives should manage consumer expectations when delivering products at a fast pace with a decrease in human production surveillance.  I think these executives know that it is impossible to truly placate consumer fickleness. By merely doing this, they are walking into a tsunami naked.  I believe that the “Twitter Tax” unconsciously holds corporations a little more accountable for the exchange and deliverance of good and services.   Social media marketing is affecting sales positively for some because the relationship between consumer and corporation has reached a zenith through communication and intelligent deployment of resources to fulfill that initiative, which is maximizing the balance sheet and consumer satisfaction to encourage brand equity. Corporations that for years were maximizing profit while minimizing production quality are finding that the bill is due, and are paying for it through online feedback, now dubbed as “The Twitter Tax.”  If they are not capable of producing a quality item after this feedback is procured, then the consumer has a chance to fight back through their keyboard, and close their wallet.  To the victor goes the spoils.

Some corporations move with the opposite mindset.  As genuine investors, they cultivate fans that are secured into an digital source for assets.  Chris Perry of Advertising Age comes up with ten fundamental principles for brands to leverage their social media fans and become an online investor.  I’ll draw out a few key statements.

1) What “Like” Means – Understand what an individual “liking” your brand says about them today, and set goals for what it should say about them tomorrow.  Your core base will come easily.  They were already fans of the brand and this is why they have “liked” your page – the brand has not added these fans, it’s simply assembled them.  It’s expanding and winning new audiences that pays dividends.

2) Put your fans to work – The sheer numbers of fans have clout only when put to use.  Powerful investor brands activate their audience as advocates.  Put those who like you to work by giving them reasons to interact with the brand and provide a platform where their enthusiastic support is amplified to their networks.  Facebook is a great place for activities.  Give your audience things to “like”, to use, to share, to post, to comment on.  Reward them as appropriate for your industry, segment, restrictions, budget and product – with applications, activities, social currency, exposure, affirmation, discounts, access, entertainment, responsiveness and respect.

3) Listen to your fans and respond to what you hear – Your Facebook community is a great source of research, product innovation ideas, consumer advocacy, customer service, and validation.  Monitor consistently and seriously, and be willing to stop and listen at every point and to change and respond and reset expectations when you identify new challenges and opportunities.  Understand that outside forces can impact your standing online so keep an eye out to mitigate risk and to anticipate if activities have impact on your perceived value.  Pay close attention to audience responses and be nimble in your response.  Be mindful of privacy and transparent with marketing.

Click the “Like” button for more insight.

All of this again demonstrates the power of social media in terms of integrating discourse.  Solutions arise with the focus of a light beam, but conflicts can be taken to a whole other level that dissipates from the main objective.  Some dialogue in the Deepwater application veered into political discourse on fossil fuels and whether the administration should further their initiatives on discovering alternative energy sources.  A few users can’t imagine a world without fossil fuels, thinking that we will revert to the Mesozoic era without its presence.  Environmentalists say that the ice caps are evaporating from fossil fuels by the nanosecond, but the truth remains elusive.  The discussion spreads online, though, without an end in sight.